The problem for Boris Johnson is that Tories aren't desperate anymore
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Version 0 of 1. Herd-like as ever, Britain’s national media are at last turning on their own creation. After seven years of inflating the big balloon called “Boris” it seems the water cooler view has finally become that it’s time to bring him crashing to the ground. The turning point event, of course, was Theresa May’s decision not to permit the incrementally outgoing Mayor Johnson to make use of the dodgy water cannons his policing deputy Stephen Greenhalgh bought off the back of a German lorry. The House of Commons spectacle of the once irrepressible Tory darling being publicly crushed by one of those vying with him to succeed David Cameron as Conservative Party leader was understandably thrilling for those more interested by the Boris Johnson of prime ministerial ambitions than by the job he’s been doing as the capital’s political leader since 2008. According to the Mail on Sunday, Johnson has gone whimpering to his old Eton and Bullingdon Club rival, asking him to stop the Home Secretary and that other leadership pretender, clever clogs George Osborne, being beastly to him. But be that as it may, the focus remains on sustaining the great “Boris” box office spectacle. The story so far: first, there was the rise from shame and failure to the globular heights of City Hall; then came the mayoral goading of prime minister “Dave”, with every trivial difference over coalition policy slab-built into an edifice of headlines; the general election result seemed to play into Johnson’s hands, the clear-cut Tory win sparing him the need for artful manoeuvrings even he might not have got away with; and now, the next part of the never ending tale - Boris Comes Undone. Was it ever going to be any different? Has Johnson ever been likely to get the top job? A couple of years back, when Ed Miliband looked on course for Downing Street and all the mutterings were of Cameron getting the push, a Johnson aide told me a story about a senior Tory MP with whom the mayor was on friendly terms. Asked to consider whether the persona known as “Boris” might ever become the nation’s premier, the MP paused and replied: “It all depends how desperate we are.” The comment reveals both the misgivings - and, perhaps, the jealousies - about Johnson’s qualities that many Tory MPs feel and the view at the time that his popularity with the public could save the party from what looked like impending doom. In other words, that backing for Johnson among the people whose support he’d initially need in any leadership campaign would be substantially pragmatic rather than rooted in confidence in his fitness for the job. And now the whole big picture has changed. Cameron did not step down and instead went on to win the election outright. Now, as Labour flails, May has put her foot down and Osborne is riding high, his budget a masterpiece of fiscal populism, his overtures to voters beyond the Conservative core more substantial than Johnson’s comedy turns, whose power was probably over-rated anyway. Meanwhile, the larger failings of Johnson’s mayoralty continue to go largely unexplored. These have been greater than the sum of troubled, high profile hallmarked projects, such as the widely-opposed garden bridge, the cable car few people use and the New Routemaster bus whose revivalist unique selling point, its “hop-on, hop-off” open rear platform, is now to be designed out of the vehicle entirely. The real trouble with Boris Johnson has been his evangelical belief that the interests of London and the bulk of its people are best served by a mayor who allows full rein to the forces of laissez faire instead of striving to shape the city into a place where the goals of enterprise, opportunity and social generosity are productively reconciled. The mayor might be a comedian, but his has never been a joke job. |